“Four teen composers, graduates of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Nancy and Barry Sanders Composer Fellowship Program, will hear their compositions performed by the orchestra for the first time in Disney Hall” for an audience of 2,100 middle school students, writes Jessica Gelt in Sunday’s (2/19) Los Angeles Times. “The event is part of a weeklong outreach program for young people called Symphonies for Schools. The junior composers, however, are completing an intensive curriculum that lasts two years and includes classes and mentoring under program director Andrew Norman and others.” The fellows in the program, now in its tenth year, are Benjamin Champion, Robby Good, Luca Mendoza and Ethan Treiman. “Each of [the fellows’] compositions was informed by something in daily life—the migration of birds (Champion), the unexpected community found on the L.A. Metro (Mendoza), the moody sun rising over the Arctic (Treiman), and a roaring wildfire that devastates the landscape (Good)…. ‘We wanted kids who were capable of pushing themselves and pushing the art form,’ [Norman] says. ‘The L.A. Phil is not just interested in preserving classical music’s past but in taking it forward.’ ” Says Mendoza, “Classical musicians are pushing boundaries in ways that other genres are not.”
Posted February 21, 2017
